Still Got Game
by Chocobubbles
Summary: “I used to be the best.” He almost stopped right then and there, but figured now was not the time to slack off on effort. After all, he had yet to make a single basket.


I love the idea of Bee as a basketball playa!!! Sorry if some of the history was off. I like how it turned out though : )

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Still Got Game

It would usually be nearing midnight when he heard it.

The echoing sound of tight rubber against a smooth wooden floor, scaling across the room, blasting through the halls. He always had a light inquiry about it, but whenever he tried to ask his other teammates, they told him not to mind it. He obliged, not caring too much to press the subject further anyway.

However, one day, he was just so curious.

Actually, he was more irritated than anything else. He awoke, mind pulsating from the noise of the constant bouncing that was coming from the basement. He shot up from his bed, eye-brow twitching like he had a sudden tick he couldn't shake off. He thrust his bed sheets aside and stormed out of his room, stomping down to the basement in thorough annoyance.

He wondered why none of his other teammates were as equally disturbed, but then, with quite logical reasoning he figured that once Aqualad was snoozing in the depths of his own personal pond, nothing could stir him—and as for the twins, well, they were kids. They could sleep through anything.

So he, being the angsty, agitated rebel of the group, was the only one that was irked by this nighttime commotion.

And he knew it was all going to be Bumblebee's fault.

"That BEE-otch better have a good reason for all this freaking noise." grumbled Speedy.

With each step, his body became heavier on the floor, weighed down with his own rage at the loudening racket that was proceeding to drive him insane. He finally appeared in the doorway, teeth clenched and eyes wide with fury.

But what he saw, banished all that feeling away and replaced it with pure confusion.

_What the hell?_

There was nothing there. The gym was completely empty, yet he could still hear it. He walked over to a wall with a rack of weights against it. Heaving the thing aside, he pressed his ear against the cold metal. Sure enough, the sound boomed through it, but the question was, how did he get to it?

Speedy was not the type to cleverly search for a secret switch or hidden button, hidden somewhere out of his sight. When he wanted something, he chose brute force, which may have not been the smartest or daintiest way to go about things, but it was effective. At least in this case.

His hands balled up into tight fists, he pounded against the wall, yelling angrily to the person on the other side.

"BEE-OOOTCH! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING BACK THERE? I CAN'T GET TO SLEEP WITH ALL THIS DAMN NOISE!"

When he didn't get immediate response, he simply banged harder. Then, about when his knuckled were turning red, the noise stopped altogether. Speedy leaned back against the wall, anticipating what would happen next.

Then the wall disappeared.

Well, the correct term would have been door, but Speedy was too frazzled to think of such things as he collapsed onto the ground.

"Do you _mind?_"

Speedy looked up at the irate eyes of his only female teammate, who was wielding an orange basketball under her left arm. He frowned back, hoisting himself up while feigning immense pain and exhaustion to purposely make her feel guilty. Obviously, didn't work.

"You know, at this hour, normal people like to _sleep_." he muttered.

"Well if you haven't noticed," she said, whipping around and flaunting her wings, "I _aint_ normal."

As he stared back, he noticed something odd about them—they were tied together. Now he was sure she'd gone crazy.

"What's up with your wings, BEE-otch?" he asked immodestly, following her into the secret room.

"You blind? They're obviously tied." she replied, dribbling the ball again and shooting a perfect basket.

"Yeah but, why?" he asked.

"So I don't get the urge to use em'." she said simply, getting the ball on rebound as it ricocheted off the right wall. She repeated her last action, making another basket, this time catching it on her finger and spinning it like the earth gone into overdrive.

"Okay…" said Speedy bemusedly, "but doesn't that make it harder?"

She stopped the ball and put it back under her arm, glaring at him with stony brown eyes.

He blinked. "_What?_"

"You really are a lazy-ass down to the core, aint ya?" she said, dribbling the ball again.

"Well, _doesn't it_?"

"Have you ever stopped to think about the fact that not _everyone_ likes to stray from a challenge?"

"I don't stray from challenges; I was in the Tournament of Heroes you know!"

"Yeah, I know—and you lost to Robin." she contorted her face cattishly, in a way that even she admitted was slightly bitchy.

"That was low, even for you, BEE-otch." he murmured, staring at the floor. He knew that she knew how he hated being compared to the Boy Blunder.

"Can't say I'm sorry. It's the truth. Besides, you came here uninvited."

"I told you, I can't sleep with you doing that."

"Cry me a river, lazy-ass."

She shot another basket, this time from the three-point line.

And it was one handed too.

"I didn't know you played basketball." said Speedy, watching Bumblebee catch the ball again.

"There's a lot of things you don't know—"

"Please, don't give me that cheap movie line. I don't know how many times you've recited your long, dragging monologues about HIVE and Brother Blood." Speedy smirked. Bumblebee didn't return the gesture.

_Damn it, I think she's really pissed this time_.

Before he knew it, the orange sphere was shooting at him faster than a heat seeking missile. He made a gagging sound as it lodged itself in his stomach, feeling more like a cannonball than a basketball.

"You really are an asshole sometimes, Speedy." said Bumblebee.

"Yeah," he said, regaining his composure and starting to dribble the ball, "but I'm also ignorant. Take it as an apology when I say, 'fill me in'."

"I aint takin' it as an apology, but I will tell you," said Bumblee with a sly smirk, "but only if you play some one on one with me."

She walked up to him, hunched over in front of him like she was ready to pounce. He grinned.

"Okay, but I have to warn you," he said, his breath hot against her cheek, "as an archer, I have _very_ good aim."

"You still talkin'?" she said, batting the ball out of his hand and darting up his side of the court.

"Hey BEE-otch that was a foul!" he said quite childishly.

"I don't think so," she grinned, "brush up on your rules of basketball, lazy-ass!"

She was toying with him. It was obvious after the first two minutes of the game, in which she had already made ten basket to his impressive zero. His face bore every aspect of anger and shame mixed together, all lightly masked with his ever present look of extreme-competitiveness, a trait he swore he didn't harbor in the least ("I am _not_ like Robin!").

"Tell me when you're finished jokin' around and we can start a _real_ game." she teased, rolling the ball along the length of her arm span, shoulder to shoulder.

"Quit showing off," he complained pettily, "and you still haven't given me the four-one-one on all of this."

Bumblebee's face instantly became somber, and she dribbled the ball again steadily on the floor. She went in for another basket, Speedy blocking her, but at the same time still intent on what she had to say. She sighed.

"I used to be the best."

He almost stopped right then and there, but figured now was not the time to slack off on effort. After all, he had yet to make a single basket.

"Yeah?" he said, knocking the ball out of her hands as she raised up to shoot. He stole it and dribbled to the other side of the court, Bumblebee hot on his trail. Their positions had flipped; now she was the one blocking him.

"When I was in middle school, they thought I was a b-ball prodigy. I was so good, they were gonna transfer me to the high-school team. Can you believe that? I was only thirteen."

"What positions did you play?" said Speedy, attempting to distract her as he aimed the basket carefully.

"I was point-guard, but I played center plenty of times. They made me point-guard because I was the smartest of my team. They said I could think all the games out before they were even played—and I was always right."

"Don't you mean usually?" he said, jerking his elbows upwards, but foiled by her swatting the ball downwards.

She retrieved it from him and bounced it on the polished-floor, it's shiny reflection displaying every gleam and sheen of her well-toned body.

"Nope, _always_." she said. She shot a basket from half-court, and it swooshed through the net with sheer flawlessness. He scowled.

He ran frantically to get the ball on rebound, but he failed predictably. She caught it and clutched it tightly between her hands, so hard that her muscles slightly bulged from the pressure.

"Then _these_ happened." Her wings twitched inside their ties. Speedy froze in his tracks, watching Bumblebee apathetically from the other side of the room. He wasn't sure what face to put on. Sympathy? Pity? It didn't matter really—she wasn't looking at him anyway.

So he stood in silence.

"They cut me from the team. From all my friends."

Then, she just dropped the ball. It bounced with that loud thrashing slapping sound that hurt your ears, then eventually simmered down to small thumps against the floor as it trailed off to the side.

"And that wasn't even the part that hurt the most."

Her face was coated with sad nostalgia, like she was about to cry, but had this inability that prevented her from it.

Speedy slowly approached her, wondering why his legs were moving when his mind hadn't told them to. He stood directly in front of her, but didn't touch her or reach out or anything. He simply just made his presence a reassuring one.

"They said I was a freak," Bumblebee said solemnly, "a monster. They said I would cheat—and I tried to tell them I wouldn't. I tried to tell them I wasn't like that, and would never be, but…"

"They didn't believe you?" asked Speedy.

"No," replied Bumblebee, "They didn't."

"And then?" Speedy realized it was hurting Bumblebee to talk about this, but he of all people knew that sometimes going through pain is a good way of letting go of all the things that haunt you.

She moved forward into him, her form starting to look smaller and smaller as she became barely inches away from his bare chest.

"All those friends that I thought were my everything…they shunned me. They really did make me feel like a monster, like I wasn't even human. I still remember that day when they threw all my school trophies away. I still remember when they rioted in the hallway outside of the principal's office to expel me from school. I remember when he did. I wasn't the star anymore. I was just…I was just a freak."

She didn't shed a single tear, but her voice trembled slightly.

"And then," she continued, "and then Brother Blood found me."

Speedy's arms slid around her waist, and he laced his fingers together behind her back. He rested his head on hers, and she spoke softly into his neck, making his flesh tingle with goosebumps.

"He told me I had a wonderful gift…" she said. He held her tighter within his arms, expecting her to burst out with a sudden emotion that demanded immediate comfort. It didn't come though, and he sort of knew it wouldn't in the first place.

"I trained harder than I ever had at HIVE. I practiced day and night, trying to become the image of perfection as a villain-in-training as I had been on the court."

Speedy almost cringed. The mention of Bumblebee going down that rode bothered him. Frightened him.

"Brother Blood made me his apprentice," she said, "I was the star again."

Speedy broke away from her and instead held her firmly by her shoulders. She was evidently surprised by this because his sudden motion caused her to make a small, almost inaudible gasp. He looked at her very seriously, in a manner that looked so foreign on his features.

"So," he said, "if you told me what your classmates thought of you, and what Brother Blood thought of you, tell me what _you_ think of yourself."

Bumblebee's eyes sparked with something Speedy couldn't identify. Little did he know that she was caught so off-guard by his question he wouldn't even believe it.

_What do I think of __**myself**_ Bumblebee repeated in her head. The question seemed so stupid aloud, but as she analyzed it more and more, she realized no one had ever asked her that ever before. So, she supposed, she wasn't sure how to reply to it.

For years her purpose was living up to others' expectations. Whether it was her coaches, her friends, the HIVE and Brother Blood—she had lived to please others. She had lived for that praise.

But now, she was a leader, and after undergoing so many ordeals, she realized how important it was for her and her team that she knew who she was—not what others thought her and wanted her to be.

"I think," she started, looking up into Speedy's masked eyes, "I _know_, I have a gift. But I don't use it for the pain and harm of others. I use it to protect those who can't protect themselves. I use it to bring about peace to this already chaotic world. I know I'm smart. I know I'm a good person. I know I don't need anyone to tell me who _I_ am."

Speedy smiled, cupping Bumblebee's chin and bringing her to his lips, laying a gentle kiss on her own.

"Now _that's_ the Bumblebee I know." he said. Her face turned a bright shade of crimson as she pushed him away.

"Don't you be getting fresh, lazy-ass," she said with a flustered expression on her face, "I was sad not drunk. You aint getting lucky."

Speedy pouted, "Aw, and here I was thinking it was so easy to get you in the sack."

"In your dreams." she said, picking up the neglected basketball.

"Though BEE-otch," said Speedy, "I have one more question."

"Yeah? What's that?"

"If you're not part of a team anymore, why do you keep playing ball?"

"Speedy," Bumblebee laughed goodheartedly, "I _am_ part of a team. And I keep playing because I still want to be the best, wings or not. I'm not going to quit playing the game I love just because I was ridiculed years ago. That's not going to stop me."

"How inspiring." Speedy smirked as he watched her dribble the ball again. He went in again, trying to steal the it.

"Oh, and I've got one more thing that I know about myself to tell you." said Bumblebee, picking up fierce momentum as she approached his basket.

"Yeah?"

"I _know_, that I can whoop your ass at basketball _any day._"

With that she closed her eyes and tossed a back-handed shot at the basket, and sure enough, it fell in with ease.

END


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